There's a reason 4 out of 5 (made up number, but probably around that) alt coins released recently have been Scrypt rather than SHA256, and it comes down to the current ASIC debacle going on with Bitcoin.

the term "has the ship set sail" is somewhat of a misnomer, because everyone has different expectations. The ship has set sail to recreate what happened to Bitcoin from 2009 to the $266 dollar high water mark I'd say, but there was also no other alt coins to draw attention from it. It was solely Bitcoin being used by the very services that made it what it is today, and now it is trying to branch out into more mainstream usage, which is just a bad idea.

Litecoin is being hyped up as going to rise once it hits MtGox, but MtGox is also a very poorly run organization so I am not expecting much beyond maybe a few dollars higher bubble and then a quick return to what we have now. I am not holding anything substantial with hopes of making a quick buck off Litecoin, just enough to make the prediction I had around mid-march come to fruition.

The only way you can really hit a home run with cryptocoins nowadays is to pick one with a low difficulty and have faith it will rise in the future. The only problem is, almost everyone is aware of this and the amount of new coins being released is somewhat overwhelming, if not downright obnoxious.

The key is to figure out which new coin has the most places to, you know, actually spend the coin at. Too many coins are solely used as code with no real market to back them up, just some online gambling games or other fringe items that won't support it long term. The things that made Bitcoin popular today are against the OCN Terms of Service, and the only other coin I know of that allows you to purchase those said things at the moment is Litecoin. This hasn't translated to a rise in LTC value yet because BTC is still being used for said things, in the biggest service for said things, with no real incentive to adopt LTC.

But as time goes on, I think more people are going to see why LTC is much more efficient to use, and the actual coin algorithm itself is more or less irrelevant to the people actually purchasing goods with these coins, and not just waiting for a chance to see a ROI of the fiat money they put into it in the first place.

But if I had to pick a coin to get behind right now it would have to at least be Scrypt based, ASICs are a good idea in a vacuum and probably going to be the future for any SHA256 coin when made and distributed properly, but I just don't see that happening any time in the near future when there is a lot more profits to be made by stalling their release as long as possible.

All technology companies stress test their products before releasing, ASIC manufacturers are just taking that to a whole new level.

Dont forget that by being on Mt.gox all the merchants that use the mt.gox API will be able to accept litecoin as well, that will give quite a boost to it aside from just "hype" they just need to fix their withdrawal issues before it gets added.

The people that started mining a year ago probably wished they'd started the year before that.
The people starting today wish they started a year ago.
And the people that start next year will wish they started today.
And so that trend will continue...

The value of all the coins is loosely connected to their difficulty (obviously there are MANY variables at play, that's why I say 'loosely'). But to put it in the simplest context: The harder it is to mine a coin, the more valuable it will become. So as long as more new people start mining, the difficulties will rise, and so will the values. Which means the ship is still anchored at port waiting for more passengers. It won't sail until it's reached capacity, and we're years away from that.

Having said that, the early adopters will earn more profit than the later ones. But the whole cryptocoin economy is in its infancy, at best. Years from now, we'll all be considered early adopters. Most of the "professional" estimates I can find, say that bitcoin will go fully mainstream in about 5 - 6 years. That's plenty of time for us early adopters to fill our wallets as much as we can before the big payday.

Well, the issue is when new ways to mine come online. Look at the ASIC boom - if you're one of the first to preorder or get an ASIC miner, you're going to see big yields for a while, then they'll taper off. If half of the ASICs are legit, this will be the biggest increase in computing power since Bitcoin started. You have new GPUs, but you're getting maybe 10% annual gains. These are 50x more energy-efficient, and several times better in performance/$.

Ok, but let's move along. Take an ASIC miner, you won't get good yields if you buy on pre-order "now", and you won't get a good price if you buy one of the first miners to ship. The cheapest models are $100 USB ASICs that do ~300MH/s. They *would* pay off in 9 months or so, if the difficulty doesn't increase. But of course it will. Much of the profit will come from mining hardware. Being generous, take the USBs, you'll break even in 9 months and see maybe a 50% return the 2nd year, 20% the third year, etc. There's so much money in ASIC miners ($100 for a 2.5W TDP ASIC, $500 for something in the 40W range - Intel's i3's have multiple times the transistor count and sell for ~ $100), that of course there's going to be a huge race in building them... eventually there will be excess supply, which will push prices on the hardware lower, and most likely you'll see similar returns ($100 ASIC goes to $40, takes 9 months to pay off and returns 50% the second year..).

A slight aside, those $100 ASICs are $100 "right now", and $80 "a month from now". They depreciate quickly. So factor in the depreciation as well.

Put simply, you're looking at 25% annualized return at best, over a 2-year period (and depreciating quickly thereafter). 25% yield, locking in all your capital on some equipment that's subject to rapid devaluation with every new ASIC release.

I'd wager you're best off preordering the newest ASICs immediately when they're available to pre-order, and flipping those. If you did this, you could make a 50% return in a matter of a couple months without any mining, and you'd have the principal back to reinvest. One more issue, the BTC market is very easy to manipulate - fake ASICs can drop the price of real ASICs, companies could be releasing something at 50% speed because they know people will buy the 40% faster model next year to keep up. I'm not saying it's entirely a fool's game but it certainly isn't the money printer most people think of it as.

If you just want to make money, do some research in the stock market, and once you get down the basics, look at options. Certainly not a get rich quick scheme, you'll need to put in at least a couple weeks of observing the market, learning technicals, learning fundamentals, etc. before you get started. If a stock moves 10% in a day, you can close to double up on what you paid for options. Say you only want to spend 20 minutes a day looking at market research, and trading at most once or twice a week, you're still looking at 20% annual return if you know what you're doing, investing conservatively.

You have to keep in mind that crypto-currencies are a huge gamble and a risk you have to take. I started mining bitcoins back in march, and made almost one bitcoin before the price and difficulty skyrocketed. Bitcoin mining was no longer profitable, so i moved on to Litecoin mining, once again right before the price and difficulty skyrocketed. I have tried other alt-coins like Feathercoin and Fastcoin, but Litecoin has been the most profitable in the long run.

So, if i were you i would invest in a few 7950's, a cheap sempron, a mobo that can support at least 3 cards, 8gb cheapo ram for each rig, and PCIE extenders. Build a few of these rigs in a room with box fans cooling them, and you should start seeing profits pretty soon.

Keep in mind though, this is VERY RISKY and it all boils down to pure luck.

I did minining for quite some time but the price of electricity here is slowly catching up with my earnings (i don't have beastly rig) and i decided to push some money into bitcoin robot and daytrade. Does the job and earns a decent profit.

I think it's got more of a chance of becoming mainstream now. The US senate just had hearings about it, and it's been talked about in mainstream business news shows more and more. So hold on to your butts, an influx of investors is gonna come soon.

Most of us should stick to mining Litecoins. According to the pool I'm in, my single 7850 card would net me a little over a dollar per day, this is computing at 240kH/s. That's modest but not too bad for the output I think. Now, the nice mining rigs make at least 10 to 15 times that, so it does pay for itself rather quickly. There's a few exchanges you can join like BTC-e (and now Mt. Gox I think) if you want to convert your Litecoin to Bitcoin.